How to Leverage a Homepage Video for Maximum Business Return [VIDEO]

Video transcription

Hello, my name is Kevin Rossiter. I’ve been producing B2B corporate video for over 25 years.

The reason we’re here today, is to look at home page video; but not how to make a home page video, but how to actually implement the homepage video, on the homepage of a website.

Now if we take a look at here, this is Mitsubishi, a big player in the financial services market

Here’s a company that is in the construction services market – supplying scaffolding, and we can see the way their video is positioned here.

Both of these examples I feel are exemplary because they show the right way to position video in the page.

But if you look at them again you’ll see that they both have a banner.

Now the banner is very different to, for instance what you see with a YouTube banner, where you just get a slice or a freeze frame of the video and it’s a kind of random looking thing and it’s not very attractive.

While, in this example here you’ll see there’s not just a banner but there’s an invitation to click.

I’d like to step back a moment to just explain why this is important

The art of winning business on the web is to always sell the next click. If you fail to sell the click then the customers journey comes to an end and they leave, go somewhere else, and your efforts are wasted.

Most companies assume that if they put a video there, it will automatically be clicked.

If you look here at this banner you will see there’s a very clear message explaining why the customer ought to make the click, it’s not assumed that they will just click.

So how do you get a launch banner? Well you need a streaming system that will align to have a launch banner – if it doesn’t do it, then you can’t have it.

Similarly, when the video has finished playing, it should end in an interactive menu.

For instance here where the customer is offered choices, and then they think Ah yes, I’ve seen the video, how do I continue my journey? Lets click here or lets click here.

So they’re given opportunities to further explore. By having an interactive menu at the and you’re helping the customer instead of just assuming when they’ve watched the video, they’ll know what to do – I think that’s a really rash assumption.

So why do companies repeatedly put their videos on their homepage as a little tiny thumbnail or have it way down the page where you’ve got to scroll down to see it.

Or even if they have it large display, it doesn’t look good and often it’s competing with a slider sort of graphic thing above, one of these three click things and it just leaves the client thinking, should I do this? Should I do that? It’s never clear. I’d like to look at why this happens.

The first reason why videos are not clearly displayed is that I think marketing managers and business owners have no clear vision of how to use the video.0

It’s that simple, it’s low on their priorities. They’re thinking about lots of other things they have to do, and somehow or another, they just park the video on the page.

It’s not satisfactory, but people do it every day.

Another reason why companies don’t give their homepage video a clear presence, right where it’s going to be seen in the visible area of the screen, is because I think somewhere along the line they lack confidence.

They’ve gone over from a text based system of their website and suddenly their pinning their all on this two minute homepage message, and I think there’s just doubt there.

They just lack confidence that’s going to do the job for them still relying on the text on their homepage.

People don’t read text, they only read it when they have to or when they’re really studying. Certainly first time visitors – do they want to read text? I’m not so sure.

And heat maps easily reveal this. If you see a heat map of a homepage you start at the top, here, then go down the page to here, you see it gets really cold, people don’t look below the visible line.

Companies hide their videos on their homepage.

If you’ve got through the issues of you’re not confident in your video, you don’t give it enough priority then you’ve got to deal with your web master.

Now, I know from experience that they feel they understand everything they need to know about streaming video, but they’re not marketers, and I don’t believe they do know.

Invariably to position your home page video clearly, you’re going to have to design your homepage template.

I think companies should be aware of this, wake up to this if you like and think yes, we want to change our homepage because our best possible message, the video needs the maximum prominence we can give it.

But when they talk to their web master, their web master is often reluctant. I’ve had many experiences like this. Web masters do 1000 things right but video is one that I believe at least 2/3rd’s just aren’t getting right and they aren’t helping their clients and their giving bad advice.

And unless a video production company offers real leadership in this area then things will remain as they are and marketing managers.

And unless the video production company offers real leadership in this area then things will remain as they are and marketing managers will wonder why they’re not happy with what they’ve got and it’s something to do with the web.

The other thing I’d like to talk about regarding the display of video on the homepage is the size. Now I believe size matters. Putting a little thumbnail on your homepage is not going to be a big winner. Now, I’ll demonstrate why size matters.

Anybody with a decent sized lounge is going to want the biggest possible television. in the last 10 years we’ve all bought bigger and bigger and bigger TV sets. Big is good.

We like big images, we like big video.

Making a video larger on the homepage gives it a lot more presence, it’s got so much more visible areas to be seen, to persuade, to influence the visitor to adopt your message, to see some insight into what you’re offering.

To sum up, I’d just like to end with a few examples from our own Studio Rossiter site, which can show you how I believe that good video on the home page or on another page can be presented.

Here, and here, and here

The take-home messages of these: make your banner big. If it’s smaller make it attractive.

Have a caption to invite people to click – don’t assume that they’ll click.

Thank you for watching. My name is Kevin Rossiter and I’m the head producer at Studio Rossiter, thank you.